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Brooklyn,  N.Y. 
nroh  of  the  Holy  Trinity 


The  Sti^ry  of  a 
Congregf^tion 


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3rooKLyn,l^-\/.  P' OCT  ?.3  W52  J 

Churdn  cir    the  \-\o\y  Tr\n\-Vy. 

THE  STORY 
OF  A 
CONGREGATION 


WHY  THE  MELISH  CASE  IS       ^ 
A  LIVING  ISSUE 


^»^ 


.M5ZB87 


THE  STORY  OF  A  CONGREGATION 


Dr.  Melish  sitting  for  Mr.  William  Zorach,  who  has  presented  the  finished 
bronze  to  the  congregation  of  Holy  Trinity  in  honor  of  his  forty-six  years 
of  service  to  the  Brooklyn  community.  "Too  often,"  said  the  sculptor, 
"memorials  are  created  after  great  men  are  dead,  when  works  of  art  can 
mean  nothing  to  them  and  little  to  those  who  did  not  know  them.  This  head 
is  meant  to  honor  a  man  while  he  is  living  and  to  help  others  now  express 
what  so  many  of  us  feel  about  his  true  greatness." 


"It  is  the  very  simplicity  of  this  story  that  gives  it  an  epic 
quality.  That  a  congregation  in  a  downtoum  city  parish 
could  meet  a  wholly  unpredictable  and  unprecedented  de- 
velopment in  American  life,  and  stand  its  ground  in  the  face 
of  pressures  that  have  made  many  abler  citizens  run  to  cover, 
is  a  witness  to  the  basic  health  of  the  rank  and  file  of  the 
American  people.  Just  so  long  as  there  are  such  men  and 
women  who  will  fight  to  maintain  the  essentials  of  demo- 
cratic practice  and  the  Christian  way  of  life,  there  is  hope 
for  our  country  and  for  our  world.  To  those  who  cannot  be 
warped  by  prejudice,  fear  or  intimidation,  the  record  of  this 
struggle  will  come  as  a  thrilling  challenge  to  renewed  effort. 
Here  is  the  brand  of  faith  and  loyalty  to  the  best  in  the 
American  scene  that  will  help  carry  us  through  this  revolu- 
tionary era  with  its  cataclysmic  changes  and  formidable 
dangers  into  a  happier  and  more  secure  age  of  moral  confi- 
dence and  material  prosperity." 

—Walter  Russell  Bowie 


Published  by 
The  Melish  Defense  Committee 

printed  in  the  u.s.a. 

,209 


THIS  IS  THE  STORY  OF  A  CONGREGATION.  We  number  about  five 
hundred  individuals.  We  are  members  of  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Trinity,  a  parish  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in 
the  heart  of  downtown  Brooklyn.  Our  beautiful  church  is  an  historic 
landmark  that  has  stood  on  Brooklyn  Heights  for  a  hundred  and  four 
years.  It  was  built  as  a  spiritual  venture  by  a  man  of  means  who 
wanted  to  build  an  edifice  that  would  glorify  God  and  open  its  doors 
to  all  manner  and  condition  of  men.  To  that  dream  of  its  founder  the 
Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity  has  remained  consistently  true. 

We  of  the  congregation  are  not  new-comers.  Some  of  us  were  bap- 
tized in  this  glorious  building  as  long  ago  as  seventy-five  years.  We 
have  worshipped  in  these  pews  all  our  lives.  Others  among  us  have 
come  into  the  parish  in  later  life,  atti'acted  by  the  beauty  of  its  archi- 
tecture, the  simple  dignity  of  its  worship,  the  tradition  of  its  music, 
its  emphasis  upon  intelligent  and  evangelical  preaching,  and  its  un- 
usual history  of  pioneering  first  in  the  liberal  re-interpretation  of  the 
Scriptures  and  then  in  the  social  application  of  the  Gospel  message 
to  all  phases  of  life.  We  have  brought  our  letters  of  transfer,  or  have 
been  confirmed  or  received,  in  keeping  with  the  practices  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church.  Some  of  us  are  relatively  new,  dating 
our  membership  back  but  a  few  years.  A  score  of  us  were  about  to  be 
confirmed  when  the  issue  related  in  this  narrative  first  broke  upon  us. 
All  of  us  are  voting  members. 

We  are  a  typical  cross-section  of  city  people.  Some  of  us  are  in 
business.  Others  have  professions  and  vocations.  Among  us  are  physi- 
cians, dentists,  librarians,  teachers,  architects,  musicians,  social  work- 
ers, journalists,  nurses  and  city  employees.  Many  of  us  are  white 
collar  workers.  Others  are  factory  hands  and  trade  unionists.  Many 
are  housewives.  Just  as  our  means  of  livelihood  are  varied,  so  are  our 
racial  and  cultural  heritages.  The  majority  of  us  are  White,  but  we 
are  not  necessarily  Anglo-Saxon.   Individuals   among  us   stem  from 


Mediterranean,  Slavic,  Scandinavian  and  Middle  Eastern  backgrounds. 
A  sixth  of  us  are  Negro,  some  coming  from  the  deep  South  and  others 
from  the  islands  of  the  British  West  Indies  where  the  upbringing 
has  been  in  Anglican  Church  schools.  Into  our  midst  we  have  wel- 
comed families  of  American  Indian,  Latin  American  and  Oriental 
origin.  We  are  a  reflection  of  the  composite  population  that  is  Brook- 
lyn. Here  we  have  been  taught  to  think  of  ourselves  as  sons  of  God 
and  therefore  brothers  one  of  another. 

We  have  had  good  reason  to  feel  pride  in  our  parish  because  of  the 
compassionate  and  generous  spirit  of  its  organized  life,  and  the  out- 
reach of  its  influence  into  the  community  of  which  it  is  a  part.  Holy 
Trinity  has  never  been  a  large  congi'egation.  It  has  chosen  rather  to 
be  an  adventurous,  pioneering  Christian  enterprise.  Loyalty  to  Christ 
and  his  teachings  has  been  given  priority  to  any  emphasis  upon  physi- 
cal numbers.  Our  ministers  have  sought  to  preach  and  apply  the 
Gospel  in  the  belief  that  the  world  needs  Christ's  spirit  of  reconcilia- 
tion and  redemption.  Because  the  world  does  not  possess  this  spirit, 
there  is  always  a  state  of  tension  between  a  community  as  it  now  is, 
and  the  same  community  that  the  Church  of  Christ  is  called  to  make 
it.  No  one  has  found  life  at  Holy  Trinity  to  be  casual  or  accommodat- 
ing. It  has  ever  been  provocative  and  challenging.  We  have  been 
taught  to  expect  no  flattery  and  to  seek  no  easy  agreement.  The  impact 
of  Jesus  Christ  upon  us  and  our  world  is  an  unsettling  and  confound- 
ing experience  that  has  confronted  us  with  decisions.  With  our 
ministers  we  have  come  to  believe  that  the  function  of  Christ's  Church 
in  this  distraught  contemporary  world  is  not  to  soothe  but  to  save! 

IN  THE  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  the  conduct  of  parish  life  rests 
with  the  rector  and  with  a  board  of  trustees,  called  the  vestry,  that 
meets  at  regular  intervals.  Within  the  parish,  the  authority  is  vested 
in  an  annual  parish  meeting.  In  the  interval  between  such  annual 
meetings,  the  vestry  is  empowered  to  act  as  the  "legal  agents  and 
representatives"  of  the  congregation. 

Our  vestrymen  at  Holy  Trinity  were  men  of  professional  and  social 
standing,  drawn  from  a  number  of  different  and  respected  walks  of 
life.  They  had  the  complete  confidence  of  the  parisliioners.  When  a 
vacancy  occasionally  developed  on  the  vestry,  the  rector  and  the 
vestrymen  canvassed  the  parish  lists  to  find  a  capable  and  worthy 
individual  to  serve  out  the  uncompleted  term.  At  the  next  annual 
parish  meeting,  such  a  temporary  appointment  was  invariably  con- 
firmed by  the  congregation.  We  in  the  pews  assumed  that  the  men 
who  were  willing  to  accept  nomination  to  the  vestry  of  a  liberal  and 


socially-concerned  parish  such  as  ours,  and  who  had  the  approval 
of  the  rector,  would  be  in  sympathy  with  the  fine  traditions  and  the 
dynamic  policies  of  the  parish.  All  through  the  years  there  had  never 
been  a  contest  over  a  vestiyman's  nomination  or  election. 

What  none  of  us  foresaw,  was  that  an  international  crisis  would 
arouse  such  widespread  hysteria  and  so  intensify  group  antagonisms, 
that  intelligent  men  of  community  standing  who  under  all  normal 
circumstances  would  have  continued  to  reflect  liberal  attitudes  and 
support  democratic  processes,  lost  their  bearings  and  yielded  to  out- 
side pressures  and  public  tension.  Positions  that  for  years  our  rector 
and  his  associates  had  been  taking  on  strictly  Christian  grounds  sud- 
denly began  to  loom  as  monstrous  in  the  eyes  of  some  of  these  vestry- 
men. Fear,  compounded  of  personal  associations  and  corporate  inter- 
ests, impelled  nine  of  the  eleven  vestrymen  to  apply  to  the  bishop 
of  the  diocese  for  the  dissolution  of  the  pastoral  relationship  between 
the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity  and  the  rector  who  had  served  us 
for  forty-five  years. 

Without  asking  our  opinion,  and  without  waiting  for  a  parish  meet- 
ing at  which  their  doubts  and  fears  could  be  frankly  and  openly 
appraised,  these  vestrymen  adopted  their  formal  resolution  in  the 
privacy  of  the  vestry  meeting.  Only  after  the  step  had  been  taken,  did 
we  learn  of  their  action.  We  do  not  wish  to  be  ungenerous.  In  the 
face  of  the  contemporary  hysteria,  it  is  possible  that  they  thought 
their  action  represented  our  true  feelings.  If  such  was  the  case,  they 
were  utterly  and  terribly  misinformed.  We  found  it  hard  to  believe 
that  responsible  and  trusted  vestrymen  of  a  church  such  as  om-s 
could  act  without  first  taking  into  account  the  wishes  of  the  congre- 
gation. Even  harder  to  accept  was  the  fact  that  they  had  turned 
against  a  friend  and  minister  of  forty-five  years'  service,  and  were 
abandoning  the  principles  of  truth  and  freedom  that  have  been  para- 
mount in  our  parish  life. 

It  is  the  ignoring  of  the  congregations  wishes  that  is  the  root  of 
our  story.  All  that  follows  is  the  consequence  of  this  basic  fact.  That 
you  may  understand  our  feelings  and  the  motives  that  have  underlain 
the  struggle  that  is  related  in  this  narrative,  for  clarity's  sake,  we  shall 
proceed  to  list  the  basic  points  and  indicate  them  in  bold-face  type. 

Nine  vestrymen,  whom  we  had  elected  to  office  in  the  belief  that 
they  would  faithfully  represent  our  interests  and  desires,  acted 
in  the  gravest  matter  that  can  concern  a  congregation — that  is, 
its  relation  to  its  ministers — without  consulting,  or  taking  into 
account,  our  wishes. 


THE  ADOPTION  of  the  formal  vestry  resolution,  which  at  any  moment 
might  be  placed  in  the  bishop's  hands,  confronted  all  of  us  who 
loved  our  parish  and  our  ministers  with  a  crisis.  As  many  of  us  as 
could  be  reached  by  telephone  were  summoned  to  consult  together. 
We  met  in  the  parish  house,  ascertained  the  exact  facts  concerning 
the  resolution  that  had  been  adopted,  and  discussed  the  situation  with 
complete  frankness.  There  was  no  division  among  us.  Unanimously 
we  formed  a  Committee  To  Retain  Our  Rector,  elected  a  chairman 
and  a  co-chairman,  and  instructed  a  smaller  executive  committee  to 
inform  the  bishop  of  the  diocese  that  the  action  of  the  nine  vestrymer. 
was  not  representative  of  the  wishes  of  the  parishioners. 

Knowing  that  we  would  have  to  produce  tangible  evidence  in 
support  of  this  contention,  we  drafted  a  two-paragraph  statement 
embodying  our  position: 

"We,  the  undersigned  members  of  Holy  Trinity  parish,  are 
completely  opposed  to  the  action  of  the  vestry  in  asking 
for  the  resignation  of  our  rector.  Dr.  John  Howard  Melish. 

"We  have  the  utmost  affection  for  Dr.  Melish  and  approve 
the  policy  he  has  consistently  followed  for  the  45  years  of 
his  rectorship.  We  state  that  the  vestry  in  this  action  in  no 
way  represents  our  sentiments." 

By  the  week's  end,  321  of  the  legal  voting  members  of  the  parish  had 
gladly  signed  this  statement.  Careful  check  showed  that  this  number 
was  just  in  excess  of  70%  of  the  voting  membership.  Armed  with  this 
evidence,  our  spokesmen  sought  an  interview  with  the  bishop.  Over 
the  telephone  we  were  informed  tliat  there  was  no  canonical  authority 
by  which  the  bishop  could  recognize  any  body  other  than  the  vestry 
as  representative  of  the  parish.  Blocked  by  this  legal  construction, 
we  sent  the  statement  with  the  number  of  its  signers  to  the  bishop 
by  telegram.  The  same  information  in  detail  was  submitted  to  our 
vestrymen  with  the  request  that  they  delay  the  filing  of  their  resolu- 
tion with  the  bishop  until  the  annual  parish  meeting  which  was  less 
than  three  months  away.  To  us  this  seemed  a  reasonable  request. 
It  was  ignored. 

In  spite  of  the  knowledge  that  over  70%  of  the  legal  voting 
members  of  the  parish  were  opposed  to  their  action  and  had  so 
stated  in  writing;  in  spite  of  the  reasonable  request  that  they 
defer  jfiling  their  petition  with  the  bishop  until  after  the  annual 
parish  meeting,  the  nine  vestrymen  proceeded  to  transmit  their 
formal  request  to  the  bishop  that  the  pastoral  relation  be  dissolved. 

8 


OUR  RECTOR,  Dr.  Melish,  naturally  sought  the  advice  of  church 
lawyers  experienced  in  the  canon  law  of  the  Protestant  Episco- 
pal Church.  With  one  accord,  they  expressed  the  conviction  that  no 
bishop  would  act  contrary  to  the  wishes  of  the  vast  majority  of  the 
parishioners.  One  of  these  lawyers  agreed  to  see  the  bishop  of  the 
diocese  and  acquaint  him  with  the  exact  figures.  In  a  meeting  in  the 
chancellor's  office,  this  attorney— who  is  a  respected  figure  of  long 
standing  in  the  church  life  of  a  neighboring  diocese— attempted  to 
describe  the  parishioners  of  Holy  Trinity  and  to  give  the  bishop  the 
statistics.  The  bishop's  brief  comment  was,  "But  who  are  these 
people?" 

During  the  entire  proceedings  only  one  meeting  ever  took  place 
between  the  associate  rector  and  the  bishop  (though  in  his  Memo- 
randum the  bishop  later  asserted  that  at  all  times  he  had  maintained 
a  pastoral  relation  with  both  the  ministers).  The  recorded  notes  of 
this  conversation  reveal  that  the  associate  rector  asked  the  bishop, 
"Have  the  members  of  the  congregation  no  rights  in  this  matter?" 
The  bishop  replied,  "I  think  not." 

A  number  of  diocesan  clergy  have  confirmed  the  fact  that  the 
bishop  told  them  individually  that  a  member  of  the  Holy  Trinity 
vestry  had  informed  him  that  Holy  Trinity  was  not  a  legitimate 
Episcopal  Church,  that  its  members  were  all  new-comers,  and  that 
most  of  them  were  "Jews"  and  "Communists."  When  the  case  came 
before  the  Supreme  Court,  the  bishop  was  called  on  the  witness  stand. 
In  the  course  of  cross-examination,  he  admitted  that  he  had  relied 
upon  information  supplied  him  by  this  one  individual  member  of  the 
vestry,  whose  word  he  had  accepted  without  question.  The  bishop 
had  discounted  the  information  provided  by  our  two  ministers,  whose 
word,  as  priests  of  the  Church,  he  might  well  have  respected;  he 
had  ignored  our  representations;  and,  on  his  own  part,  he  had  made 
no  independent  investigation. 

On  the  basis  of  wholly  unsupported  allegations  that  were  in 
fact  erroneous  and  libelous,  the  bishop  drew  the  conclusion  that 
the  congregation  of  Holy  Trinity  ought  to  be  disregarded, 

ALTHOUGH  it  was  by  now  quite  clear  that  the  bishop  and  his  chan- 
■  cellor  had  no  intention  of  seeing  us,  our  people  attempted  to 
make  their  wishes  known  to  the  bishop  by  telephone  calls,  telegrams 
and  letters.  As  a  result  of  this  flood  of  communications,  the  bishop 
decided  that  it  was  imperative,  before  he  acted  on  the  vestrymen's 
petition,  to  provide  some  form  of  semi-public  hearing.  Formal  notice 
of  such  a  hearing,  to  be  held  before  the  standing  committee  of  the 


diocese,  was  received  by  our  ministers,  the  vestrymen,  and  the  co- 
chairmen  of  our  committee. 

We  are  working  people,  most  of  us,  and  to  take  two  days  off  with- 
out pay  meant  considerable  sacrifice  for  ourselves  and  our  families. 
Yet  more  tlian  fifty  of  us  traveled  by  train  to  Garden  City  for  the 
two-day  hearing.  After  some  argument  as  to  whether  any  one  otlier 
than  the  two  co-chairmen  should  be  admitted,  the  sergeant-at-arms, 
on  instruction  from  those  within,  finally  opened  the  door  to  all  who 
were  identified  as  members  of  Holy  Trinity  parish.  The  press  was 
rigidly  excluded.  In  the  Square  Room  in  the  basement  of  the  Cathe- 
dral House  we  took  our  seats  opposite  a  long  table  at  which  the  eight 
members  of  the  standing  committee  were  seated.  What  transpired  in 
those  two  days  need  not  be  recounted  here.  In  the  earlier  booklet, 
"The  Melish  Case:  Challenge  to  the  Church,"  Bishop  Ludlow  has 
written  an  adequate  description  of  its  atmosphere  and  conduct.  For 
our  purposes  in  this  second  booklet,  we  are  content  to  describe  two 
brief  episodes.  Though  they  were  minor  incidents,  they  had  a  funda- 
mental influence  upon  the  reaction  of  all  of  us. 

A  lawyer  on  our  vestry  made  the  opening  address  to  the  standing 
committee.  Vividly  he  sought  to  dramatize  the  "outside  activities"  of 
our  associate  rector,  and  piled  on  the  table  a  stack  of  bound  volumes 
of  newspaper  clippings  as  evidence  of  publicity  that  he  claimed  had 
hurt  our  parish.  Towards  the  end  of  this  harangue  which  was  exclu- 
sively political  in  content  and  without  reference  to  theology  or  ethics, 
he  felt  compelled  to  anticipate  the  question  being  raised  as  to  why 
the  nine  vestrymen  were  unwilling  to  delay  action  until  the  parish 
meeting.  Defending  the  vestry's  decision  to  demand  immediate  con- 
sideration of  its  petition,  he  asserted  that  the  issues  in  this  matter 
were  of  such  grave  concern  to  Church  and  Nation  that  they  could  not 
be  decided  by  reference  to  the  congregation. 

Later  in  the  course  of  the  hearing  when  counsel  for  Dr.  Melish 
confronted  him  with  the  typed  list  of  the  names  of  those  who  had 
signed  the  statement  repudiating  the  vestry's  action,  he  took  it  in  his 
hands  and  then  turned  to  the  standing  committee.  "How  do  we  know 
who  these  people  are?"  he  asked.  Thumbing  the  pages  in  search  of 
names  to  emphasize  his  point,  he  selected  two  which  he  read  with  a 
slurring  and  invidious  inflection.  "Rodri-gyoo-ez!  Zo-rach!"  Like  a 
prosecuting  attorney  appealing  to  the  prejudices  of  a  jury  and  wish- 
ing to  drive  home  the  idea  that  all  of  us  who  had  signed  the  statement 
were  alien  and  irresponsible,  he  tossed  the  list  on  to  the  table. 

Mrs.  Rodriguez,  a  Spanish  protestant,  lives  a  block  down  the  street 
from  the  church,  has  been  a  devoted  member  of  Holy  Trinity  for  more 

10 


than  tliree  decades,  and  has  brought  up  her  entire  family  within  the 
Episcopal  fold.  Mrs.  Zorach,  who  was  in  the  hearing  room  and  rose 
to  her  feet  in  emphatic  protest,  is  the  daughter  of  a  former  vestryman 
of  a  Philadelphia  suburban  parish,  has  brought  her  husband  and  three 
young  sons  to  Holy  Trinity,  and  is  one  of  the  ardent  younger  workers 
in  our  women's  organizations. 

These  two  episodes,  though  small  in  themselves,  are  indicative  of 
the  fundamental  attitude  that  was  adopted  by  our  nine  vestrymen 
towards  the  people  by  whom  they  were  elected  to  oflBce.  Nor  did  we 
fail  to  notice  that  so  outrageous  a  demonstration  of  social  and  racial 
chauvinism  drew  no  rebuke  from  any  member  of  the  standing  com- 
mittee or  from  the  chancellor. 

All  of  us  came  back  from  that  Garden  City  hearing  with  the  im- 
pression that  we  had  witnessed  something  unclean.  There  had  been 
no  attempt  to  discover  what  items  were  true  or  what  was  false  in  the 
charges  of  the  vestry  that  formed  the  indictment  leveled  against  our 
ministers.  No  effort  was  made  to  inquire  into  the  motives  that  had 
underlain  their  activities  or  the  reasoning  as  Christians  that  had  led 
to  the  formulation  of  their  convictions.  From  the  outset  the  hearing 
was  an  irrational  proceeding,  conducted  as  if  the  mere  enumeration 
of  a  series  of  alleged  charges  was  sufficient  to  incriminate,  convict 
and  condemn. 

Later,  Dr.  Melish  informed  us  that  the  bishop  had  telegraphed  him 
to  come  to  Christ  Church,  Clinton  Street,  one  Sunday  afternoon  well 
before  tlie  hearing.  There  the  bishop  had  read  to  him  the  text  of  a 
resolution  that  had  been  adopted  the  previous  week  by  the  standing 
committee,  asking  for  Dr.  Melish's  resignation.  This  was  before  the 
Garden  City  hearing  ever  took  place!  When  we  learned  of  this,  it 
instantly  became  obvious  why  the  hearing  at  Garden  City  before  the 
standing  committee  was  so  lacking  in  objectivity.  It  was  nothing  more 
than  a  concession  to  public  opinion.  As  a  Federal  Judge,  prominent 
in  the  diocese,  incisively  commented:  "The  standing  committee  put 
the  cart  before  the  horse.  It  decided  to  remove  the  Melishes.  Then 
it  sought  the  ways  and  means  to  effect  its  decision."  The  terrible  truth 
of  this  revelation  was  later  confirmed  by  the  bishop's  personal  testi- 
mony under  cross-examination  on  the  witness  stand  in  the  Supreme 
Court.  He  admitted  under  oath  that  the  decision  of  the  standing 
committee  had  been  made  before  the  hearing. 

As  the  true  nature  of  this  removal  proceeding  stood  revealed, 
we  saw  that  it  was  closer  to  "Lynch  Law"  than  to  due  process, 
and  that  nothing  would  prevent  its  being  carried  out  except  some 
immediate  and  public  assertion  of  our  congregational  rights. 

11 


AT  THE  earliest  possible  moment  we  sought  legal  advice  and  were 
■  informed  by  competent  counsel  that  there  were  provisions  in  the 
Religious  Corporations  Act  of  the  State  of  New  York  whereby  special 
parish  meetings  can  be  called  upon  dates  other  than  that  of  the  stated 
annual  meeting,  and  that  there  was  excellent  precedent— sustained  by 
the  highest  court  of  the  State— where  congregations  had  removed 
trustees  who  had  disregarded  their  wishes,  even  though  their  terms 
of  office  had  not  expired.  On  the  strength  of  this  legal  advice,  we 
petitioned  the  rector  to  call  such  a  special  parish  meeting  with  the 
specific  purpose  of  removing  from  office  the  offending  vestrymen. 
To  forestall  any  such  consequences  of  a  special  meeting,  notice  of 
which  was  read  from  the  chancel  steps  at  the  morning  service  the 
following  Sunday,  the  bishop  precipitately  published  his  Judgment 
dissolving  the  pastoral  relation  between  Dr.  Melish  and  Holy  Trinity 
Church. 

The  findings  of  the  standing  committee  were  released  simultane- 
ously with  the  bishop's  Judgment.  These  findings  were  embodied  in 
a  lengthy  document,  composed  by  the  chancellor.  Col.  Jackson  A. 
Dykman,  that  filled  many  pages  of  foolscap.  The  less  said  about  these 
two  productions,  the  better.  Time  will  surely  put  them  in  their  proper 
place.  They  were  succinctly  characterized  by  Dr.  Shipler  in  The 
Churchman: 

"We  believe  that  .  .  .  the  church  will  ultimately  consign 
the  bishop's  unhappy  Judgment  and  Memorandum  to  the 
Museum  of  Ecclesiastical  Horrors  where  they  rightly  be- 
long, in  company  with  the  decrees  of  the  Spanish  Inquisi- 
tion and  the  Iron  Lady  of  Nuernberg." 

Holy  Trinity  parish  has  never  catered  to  people  of  any  one  social 
stratum  or  political  viewpoint.  Our  ministers  have  always  taken  the 
position  that  the  function  of  the  pulpit  is  to  teach  Christian  Truths 
and  to  encourage  their  practical  application,  but  to  leave  the  precise 
form  of  that  application  to  the  intelligence  and  conscience  of  each 
individual  listener.  No  one  knows  what  proportion  of  our  people 
share  any  political  belief,  or  support  any  particular  political  party. 
Indeed,  it  is  not  our  business  in  the  church  to  know.  The  one  thing 
we  can  say  with  assurance  is  that  our  congregation  probably  embraces 
the  whole  spectrum  of  political  loyalties  to  be  found  in  so  cosmopolitan 
a  community  as  Brooklyn. 

When  the  chancellor,  in  the  findings  of  the  standing  committee, 
accused  our  ministers  of  being  trustees  of  The  Churchman  ( as  if  that 
were  a  heinous  crime),  he  was  directly  incriminating  those  members 

12 


of  our  parish  who  subscribe  to  The  Churchmmi  and  support  its  fight- 
ing editor,  Dr.  Guy  Emery  Shipler.  When  the  chancellor  defined 
wartime  support  of  Russian  War  Relief  as  disloyalty  to  Christ,  he 
was  conveniently  forgetting  that  he  and  two  other  members  of  the 
standing  committee  were  themselves  directors  of  the  Brooklyn  Division 
of  Russian  War  Relief.  When  he  accused  our  ministers  of  subversion 
because  they  had  advocated  closer  relations  with  the  Soviet  Union 
within  the  United  Nations  as  the  road  to  peace,  he  was  attacking  such 
members  of  our  parish  as  had  supported  the  work  of  the  National 
Council  of  American-Soviet  Friendship  of  which  our  associate  rector 
for  three  years  was  chairman.  When  he  pilloried  our  ministers  for 
sponsoring  a  dinner  honoring  the  New  York  State  chairman  of  the 
Progressive  Party,  he  was  indicting  those  members  of  our  parish  who 
voted  for  the  Episcopalian  who  headed  that  Party's  ticket  in  the 
presidential  election  of  1948.  In  writing  these  findings  of  the  standing 
committee,  which  were  political  judgments  and  nothing  else,  the 
chancellor  was  oblivious  to  the  fact  that  the  charges  he  was  placing 
against  our  ministers  were  equally  applicable  to  others  within  our 
congregation,  and  therefore  that  his  indictment  constituted  an  attack 
upon  our  freedom  of  thought.  If  our  views  on  international  matters 
and  world  peace  have  no  place  in  the  thinking  of  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Church,  then  many  of  us  ought  to  be  excluded  from  its  mem- 
bership. 

The  attack  upon  the  Melishes,  as  launched  by  the  chancellor, 
was  in  actuality  a  political  attack  against  the  freedom  of  thought 
of  the  congregation  of  Holy  Trinity  Church,  and  an  indictment 
of  the  opinions  of  every  Protestant  Episcopalian  anywhere  in  the 
country  who  might  share  political  views  similar  to  ours  on  world 
peace  or  social  change. 

BY  vv^HAT  AUTHORITY,  wc  found  ouTSclves  asking,  can  a  standing 
committee  of  an  individual  diocese,  acting  at  the  behest  of  a 
chancellor,  dictate  the  standards  of  social  opinion  and  political  behef 
for  the  clergy  of  that  diocese,  and  for  the  people  in  the  pews?  What 
canon  gives  a  bishop  the  right  to  declare,  as  Bishop  DeWolfe  did  to 
Dr.  Melish,  that  he  had  heard  the  younger  Mr.  Melish  advocate  a 
National  Health  Plan,  that  a  National  Health  Plan  was  "socialistic," 
and  that  no  advocate  of  socialism  would  be  tolerated  in  his  diocese? 
We  can  well  imagine  how  amused  would  be  the  clergy  and  the  laity 
of  the  Church  of  England  at  any  such  interpretation  of  Anghcan 
thought  and  practice. 
There  are  many  among  us  at  Holy  Trinity  who  do  not  entirely 

13 


agree  with  the  stands  taken  by  our  ministers.  But  agreement  or  dis- 
agreement is  not  the  issue.  It  is  the  very  right  to  think  for  ourselves. 
And  in  this  case,  it  is  not  merely  the  right  of  the  clergy  to  think  for 
themselves  but  the  fundamental  right  of  the  laity  as  well. 

We  are  all  agreed  that  if  there  had  been  some  theological  heresy, 
or  moral  tm-pitude,  or  neglect  of  duties  in  the  Holy  Trinity  situation, 
our  ministers  should  have  been  brought  to  trial.  For  such  offenses, 
the  canons  of  our  Church  provide  ecclesiastical  courts  made  up  exclu- 
sively of  clergymen  (the  accused's  peers,  as  Anglo-Saxon  jurispru- 
dence requires);  the  rules  of  evidence  must  be  observed,  and  there 
is  a  right  of  appeal  to  a  higher  provincial  court  of  review.  Our  minis- 
ters were  granted  no  such  trial.  The  associate  rector  never  had  any 
charge  placed  against  him  and  the  rector  was  sjiven  nothing  but  a 
sham  hearing  before  a  standing  committee  made  up  of  four  clergy- 
men and  four  laymen,  violating  every  rule  of  evidence,  and  with  no 
right  of  further  appeal.  A  non- judicial  body  had  the  effrontery  to 
pass  on  standards  of  social  conduct  and  political  belief  with  respect  to 
the  clergy  and  the  laity  of  our  Church  within  a  single  diocese. 

Let  us  look  at  this  matter  candidly.  Who  are  the  four  laymen  on 
the  standing  committee  of  the  diocese  of  Long  Island?  The  first  is 
a  manufacturer  of  mustard.  The  second  is  the  president  of  a  local 
savings  bank.  The  third  is  a  receiver  of  a  bankrupt  railroad.  The 
fourth  is,  or  more  correctly  was,  counsel  for  a  chain  of  trust  com- 
panies. By  what  authority— canonical,  spiritual,  moral,  intellectual- 
do  such  laymen  have  the  right  to  pass  on  decisions  of  conscience 
made  by  two  ordained  priests  of  the  Church,  one  of  whom  has  as 
distinguished  a  lifetime  of  pastoral  and  humanitarian  service  behind 
him  as  any  clergyman  in  the  nation,  and  the  other  of  whom  has  served 
for  fifteen  years  in  tu^o  large  city  parishes  and  received  his  preparation 
for  the  ministry  in  four  of  the  outstanding  educational  and  theological 
institutions  in  the  western  world?  Of  these  two  ministers,  the  bishop 
himself  on  the  witness  stand  testified: 

Q.  You  concede  that  there  is  no  doctrinal  question,  or  ques- 
tion of  heresy? 

A.  That  has  not  been  considered,  no,  sir. 

Q.  And  there  is  no  question  of  immorality,  or  anything 
of  tliat  sort? 

A.   Oh,  absolutely  not.  That  I  put  in  my  statement:  I  have 

every  confidence  in  the  moral  integrity  of  these  men. 

W 
The   standing   committee   usurped   powers   belonging   only  to 

ecclesiastical  courts  and  to  the  General  Convention  of  the  Protes- 

14 


lanl  Episcopal  Church,  which  is  the  sole  body  authorized  in  our 
communion  to  establish  standards  of  belief  and  practice;  the 
findings  of  the  standing  committee  are,  in  consequence,  outside 
its  competence,  immoral  and  worthless;  and,  unless  this  dan- 
gerous precedent  is  challenged,  there  will  be  in  operation  a 
purely  arbitrary  procedure  that  can  be  employed  to  bedevil  any 
clergyman  or  congregation  as  the  whim  or  the  prejudice  of 
diocesan  authorities  may  dictate. 


"E  HAVE  CALLED  these  findings  immoral.  We  do  this  because  of 
the  deceptive  and  misleading  manner  in  which  a  removal  action 
was  brought  against  one  man  and  tlie  blame  was  placed  upon  an- 
other. Had  the  younger  Mr.  Melish  done  anything  wrong,  he  should 
have  been  tried  as  an  individual.  The  truth  appears  to  be  that  the 
authorities  wished  to  be  rid  of  Dr.  Melish  but  knew  that  public 
opinion  would  not  look  kindly  upon  any  attack  directly  aimed  at 
him,  whereas,  in  the  existing  state  of  public  tension,  a  removal 
proceeding  justified  by  the  positions  taken  by  the  son  might  be  more 
easily  accepted  by  the  general  public. 

The  most  shocking  aspect  of  the  bishop's  judgment,  as  the  chan- 
cellor drew  it  up,  was  its  dating.  As  everyone  knows,  the  documents 
were  delivered  to  Dr.  Melish  at  the  close  of  the  Ash  Wednesday 
Community  Noonday  Service  when  the  suffragan  bishop  of  the  dio- 
cese, who  had  just  preached  the  sermon  as  the  guest  of  our  parish, 
was  still  with  Dr.  Melish  in  the  rectory.  Nothing  so  aroused  us  at  Holy 
Trinity  as  the  heartlessness  and  the  cynicism  of  this  timing.  For  a 
bishop  who  claimed  spiritual  sensitivity  and  was  urging  respect  for 
holy  days,  the  action  was  unbelievably  callous.  Why  did  he  do  it?  The 
answer  is  obvious.  The  chancellor  had  pointed  out  to  him  that  under 
the  canons,  thirty  days  must  elapse  before  an  episcopal  judgment  dis- 
solving a  pastoral  relation  can  become  effective.  If  there  had  been 
even  a  few  days'  delay,  the  removal  of  the  rector  could  not  have  been 
effected  until  after  the  annual  parish  meeting.  Therefore,  the  removal 
of  Dr.  Melish  had  to  be  timed  to  take  effect  in  such  a  way  that  the 
parishioners  on  Easter  Monday  would  be  confronted  with  a  fait  ac- 
compli. Indeed,  just  after  the  publication  of  the  bishop's  judgment, 
one  vestryman  stated  bluntly  to  a  number  of  the  parishioners  that 
now  there  would  be  no  parish  meeting  this  year  at  all,  since  there 
would  be  no  rector  to  call  it!  If  any  doubt  still  remained  in  our  minds 
as  to  the  illegitimacy  and  irregularity  of  the  removal  process,  here 
was  the  final  and  convincing  evidence  that  this  was  a  plain,  political 

15 


"frame-up,"  so  devised  that  no  effective  protest  could  be  raised  by 
the  congregation. 

Denied  all  opportunity  to  play  any  part  in  determining  the 
future  character  and  ministry  of  our  parish,  lo  which  we  had  all 
liberally  given  of  our  time,  our  loyally  and  our  money;  and 
realizing  that  the  future  of  Holy  Trinity  was  being  entrusted  into 
the  hands  of  nine  men  whom  we  had  elected  and  who  had  then 
turned  against  us,  their  electors;  we  found  our  American,  protes- 
tant  and  democratic  instincts  rising  in  protest ;  and  we  determined 
to  stand  our  ground  and  assert  the  traditional  rights  of  a  congre- 
gation in  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church. 

WE  PRESUME  that  the  pubhcation  of  the  bishop's  judgment,  and 
its  release  in  full  to  all  the  metropolitan  newspapers,  was  in- 
tended to  awe  us.  It  had  exactly  the  opposite  effect.  Thoroughly 
aroused,  our  people  went  ahead  with  the  special  meeting;  we  turned 
out  in  numbers;  charges  were  preferred  against  the  nine  vestiymen; 
a  vote  was  taken,  and  they  were  overwhelmingly  removed  from 
office.  Notice  was  then  read  at  divine  service  the  next  Sunday,  calling 
a  second  special  meeting  of  the  parish  to  elect  their  successors.  This 
meeting  was  never  held.  On  the  advice  of  the  chancellor,  the  nine 
vestrymen  went  into  the  civil  courts  and  obtained  a  temporary  re- 
straining order.  They  asked  for  a  permanent  injunction  declaring  their 
removal  illegal,  restoring  them  to  office  for  the  balance  of  their  normal 
terms,  and  preventing  anyone  from  interfering  with  the  carrying  out 
of  the  bishop's  judgment  dissolving  the  pastoral  relation.  A  preliminary 
hearing  was  set  before  Mr.  Justice  Norton  in  Supreme  Court. 

What  particularly  interested  our  people  and  the  score  or  more  of 
Brooklyn  clergy  who  crowded  the  court  room,  was  the  arrogance  of 
the  chancellor  who  asserted,  with  complete  disregard  to  the  long 
history  of  democratic  struggle  that  gave  birth  to  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  in  these  United  States,  that  the  vestry  is  the  cor- 
poration of  a  Protestant  Episcopal  church  and  that  the  only  specific 
right  granted  to  a  congregation  by  the  canons  of  our  Church  is  that 
of  selecting  vestrymen  at  the  annual  parish  meeting. 

Col.  Dykman  went  to  great  lengths  to  define  our  Church  as  one  in 
which  authority  descends  from  above,  contrasting  it  with  churches  of 
the  congregational  type  in  which  authority  ascends  from  below.  He 
did  not  explain  what  he  meant  by  "authority,"  leaving  the  impression 
that  it  was  absolute  and  all-embracing.  What  he  was  propounding  was 
essentially  the  Roman  Catholic  theory  of  authority.  Melodramatically 
he  asserted  that  our  ministers  were  violating  their  ordination  vow 

16 


in  which  they  had  promised  to  "obey  the  godly  admonition"  of  their 
bishop,  in  refusing  to  resign  and  tlien  in  refusing  to  accept  his  judg- 
ment dissolving  the  pastoral  relation. 

All  of  us  in  the  court  room  knew  sufficient  of  the  history  and  back- 
ground of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  to  appreciate  that  the  chan- 
cellor was  deliberately  misrepresenting  the  facts  of  our  Ordination 
Service  to  impress  and  influence  the  court.  There  is  a  fundamental 
distinction  between  the  pre-Reformation  oath  of  ordination,  used  to 
this  day  in  the  Roman  Church  where  absolute  obedience  to  the  bishop 
is  sworn,  and  the  Anglican  ordination  vow.  The  Anglican  reformers 
substituted  the  discriminating  words  "obey  the  godly  admonition  of 
your  bishop."  Such  a  crucial  change  in  wording  can  only  mean  one 
thing— that  on  occasion  the  admonition  of  a  bishop  may  be  some- 
thing less  than  "godly,"  and  that  priests  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Church,  in  accepting  ordination,  do  not  sign  away  their  minds  or 
their  consciences!  This  fundamental  distinction  between  the  Roman 
and  the  Anglican  concepts  of  priestly  obedience  is  explained  in  "The 
American  Prayer  Book:  Its  Origin  and  Principles,"  by  Bishop  Parsons 
and  Professor  Bayard  Jones: 

"Especially  noteworthy  in  the  Anglican  Ordinals  is  the  emphasis 
upon  the  Holy  Scriptures.  Bishops,  Priests,  and  Deacons  signify  their 
acceptance  of  the  Scriptures  as  'containing  all  Doctrine  required  as 
necessary  for  eternal  salvation';  and  the  Priest,  like  the  Bishop,  pledges 
himself  'to  teach  nothing,  as  necessary  to  eternal  salvation,  but  that 
which  he  shall  be  persuaded  may  be  concluded  and  proved  by  the 
Scripture.' 

"This  vow  of  the  Priest,  which  is  a  distinguishing  mark  of  the 
Anglican  Ordinal,  is  of  great  significance.  In  the  ancient  Catholic 
Church,  the  Bishops  were  considered  to  be  the  guardians  of  Christian 
truth.  This  guardianship  (the  original  'Apostolic  Succession')  was 
handed  down  from  one  generation  to  another:  with  tlie  consequence 
that  as  the  Church  developed,  and  questions  of  doctrine  became  im- 
portant, it  was  assumed  that  they  should  be  referred  to  the  Bishops 
alone.  The  pre-Reformation  Ordinals  were  consequently  framed  on 
the  basis  of  this  theory. 

"The  Church  of  England,  in  breaking  with  tliis  tradition,  lifted  the 
Presbyterate  to  a  new  importance,  and  opened  tlie  way  to  a  more 
thoroughly  representative  expression  of  the  faith  of  all  Christian 
people.  The  position  which  the  Episcopal  Church  in  America  has 
taken  in  giving  to  General  Convention— laity  as  well  as  clergy— the 
filial  decision  in  interpretation  of  doctrine,  would  hardly  have  been 
possible  were  the  Bishops  regarded  as  its  sole  guardians  and  inter- 

17 


preters.  Likewise,  the  Anglican  Priest  is  free,  intellectually  as  well 
as  morally." 

This  scholarly  exposition  of  the  fundamental  polity  of  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  in  the  United  States  will  indicate  unmistakably 
the  incorrect,  unhistorical  and  strictly  partisan  character  of  the  inter- 
pretation of  Anglican  theory  that  Col.  Dykman  was  presenting  to  the 
court.  However,  Mr.  Justice  Norton  was  not  swayed  by  the  chancel- 
lor's rhetoric.  He  did  the  judicial  thing  that  neither  vestry,  standing 
committee,  chancellor,  nor  bishop  had  done.  Recognizing  that  under 
post-Reformation  polity  a  congregation  has  a  greater  place  in  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Chiirch  than  in  its  Roman  Catholic  counterpart, 
Mr.  Justice  Norton  issued  a  temporary  injunction  holding  all  parties 
in  statu  quo  pending  a  trial  of  the  issues.  He  then  set  the  date  for 
trial  on  the  day  of  the  annual  parish  meeting,  thereby  respecting— 
as  the  diocesan  authorities  had  refused  to  do— the  traditional  right  of 
the  congregation  to  express  its  opinion,  and  to  sustain  or  reject  in 
secret  election  the  vestrymen  who  had  acted  allegedly  as  its  agents 
and  representatives. 

The  nine  vestrymen,  realizing  that  a  catastrophe  had  occurred  to 
disrupt  their  carefully  laid  plans  to  have  the  bishop's  judgment  car- 
ried into  efiFect  before  the  annual  parish  meeting,  now  sought  by  an- 
other tactic  to  separate  the  congregation  and  the  ministers.  Since  they 
were  temporarily  restored  to  oflBce  by  the  court  order,  they  applied 
formally  to  the  bishop  to  send  in  a  supply  clergyman  to  take  the  Palm 
Sunday,  Holy  Week  and  Easter  services.  This  application  confronted 
us  with  the  second  major  crisis  in  our  struggle.  We  saw  that  it  had 
to  be  met  with  the  same  immediate  and  overt  action  as  had  countered 
the  first  crisis.  Taking  advantage  of  the  court  injunction  maintaining 
the  status  quo  pending  trial,  which  meant  that  our  ministers  were  as 
yet  unaffected  by  the  bishop's  ruling  and  therefore  were  free  to 
officiate  in  the  church,  we  advised  our  attorneys  to  notify  the  restored 
vestrymen  that  if  any  strange  clergyman  sent  by  the  bishop  were  to 
enter  the  chancel  on  Palm  Sunday  morning,  the  entire  congregation 
would  rise  and  march  out  of  the  church.  Alarmed  at  the  prospect  of 
a  public  scandal,  the  vestrymen  withdrew  their  application  to  the 
bishop  for  a  supply  clergyman.  In  consequence,  our  two  ministers  took 
all  the  Holy  Week  services^  conducting  them  on  the  high  spiritual  and 
moral  plane  that  we  have  come  to  associate  with  their  entire  ministry. 

Col.  Dykman  had  argued  before  the  court  tliat  the  one  specific  right 
of  a  congregation,  stipulated  in  the  canons,  was  the  right  of  electing 
the  vestrymen  at  the  annual  meeting.  Fortunately  for  us,  this  was  the 

IB 


only  legal  weapon  that  we  needed  to  alter  and  reverse  the  entire 
pattern  of  the  removal  proceeding,  now  that  we  were  being  given  the 
time  to  use  it.  Since  the  granting  of  a  temporary  injunction  holding 
all  things  in  statu  quo  guaranteed  the  occun'ence  of  our  annual  meet- 
ing, it  was  incumbent  upon  us  to  make  full  use  of  this  opportunity 
to  defeat  as  many  as  possible  of  the  old  vestrymen  whose  terms 
expired,  and  to  replace  them  with  men  pledged  to  represent  our 
wishes.  By  Col.  Dykman's  own  argument,  this  was  simply  to  exercise 
our  minimum  guaranteed  right  as  a  parish.  We  set  out  to  canvass  our 
ranks  for  suitable  nominees  to  the  vestry.  It  was  not  as  simple  a  process 
as  we  had  thought. 

To  those  who  have  never  experienced  the  merciless  publicity  of  the 
commercial  press  when  it  turns  its  full  spotlight  upon  some  victim, 
it  may  seem  strange  to  speak  of  the  personal  decision  that  was  re- 
quired of  each  of  our  nominees.  He  was  compelled  to  ask  himself: 
how  will  the  publicity'  of  my  going  on  the  vestry  aflFect  my  job,  my 
family,  my  future?  Will  there  be  reprisals?  One  man,  who  was  to 
retire  in  just  three  weeks  and  needed  for  himself  and  his  wife  the 
pension  due  him  for  his  years  of  service  with  a  pubhc  utility,  sat  up 
half  the  night  discussing  with  his  wife  whether  election  to  the  vestry 
might  endanger  his  pension.  Another  parishioner,  a  man  with  a  wife 
and  children,  who  was  employed  in  a  large  concern  where  his  im- 
mediate superior  was  a  Roman  Catholic  bitterly  opposed  to  positions 
we  had  advanced  at  Holy  Trinity,  had  to  face  the  possibility  of  the 
loss  of  his  job.  That  these  decisions  were  not  easily  made  can  be 
deduced  from  the  refusal  of  another  unusually  sensitive  and  sympa- 
thetic supporter  of  our  parish  who  was  an  executive  in  a  semi-public 
institution  on  the  board  of  which  sat  the  very  vestryman  we  were 
asking  him  to  displace.  "Next  vear,"  said  this  parishioner,  "if  you 
still  want  me,  I  shall  be  honored  to  run;  but  this  year  you  will  under- 
stand why  I  cannot  compete  for  such  office."  Soul-searching  went  into 
such  decisions,  yet  by  Easter  Monday  five  able  and  responsible  men 
had  thought  the  challenge  through  and  had  given  their  consent.  By 
an  overwhelming  vote,  in  ratio  of  ten-to-one,  these  nominees  were 
elected  to  office.  With  the  Treasurer  of  the  parish  who  was  the  one 
vestryman  to  vote  against  the  dissolution  petition,  these  five  new  vestry- 
men gave  to  the  congregation  a  majority  of  the  votes  on  the  vestry. 
We  had  regained  control  of  the  corporation  of  Holy  Trinity 
Church,  thereby  reminding  every  vestryman  in  every  parish  in 
every  diocese  that  it  is  the  congregation  that  elected  him  to  office, 
and  that  it  is  to  the  congregation  that  he  and  his  fellow-vestrymen 
are  responsible  as  "legal  agents  and  representatives." 

19 


THE  TRIAL  before  Mr.  Justice  Steinbrink  was  already  in  its  second 
day  when  the  results  of  this  election  were  made  known  to  the 
court.  It  might  have  been  anticipated  that  some  greater  deference 
would  now  be  paid  to  the  parishioners,  since  so  clear  a  demonstra- 
tion of  the  unrepresentative  character  of  the  old  vestiymen  had  been 
given  the  night  before.  On  the  contrary,  however,  the  court  proceeded 
to  treat  us  like  bad  children  who  had  defied  authority  and  needed  a 
scolding  and  spanking.  Our  people  sensed  this  reaction  instantly.  It 
served  to  increase  their  tenacity.  There  was  something  positively 
thrilling  about  the  strength  of  will  that  was  displayed  by  the  first 
parishioners  to  be  placed  on  the  witness  stand  to  testify  in  behalf  of 
the  rector.  Under  relentless  cross-examination,  they  stood  their  ground 
resolutely.  When  they  were  asked  whether  they  refused  to  accept  the 
bishop's  judgment,  they  unswervingly  took  their  stand  by  their  min- 
isters and  parish.  So  unflinchingly  did  the  first  twelve  witnesses  come 
through  the  grueling  questioning  that  the  attorney  for  the  vestrymen 
and  Col.  Dykman  consulted  together  and  then  informed  the  court 
that,  to  save  the  court's  time,  they  would  admit  into  the  trial  record 
a  stipulation  that  there  were  321  parishioners  ready  to  testify  in  behalf 
of  the  rector  and  refusing  to  accept  the  bishop's  judgment.  This  testi- 
mony of  our  people  was  so  damaging  that  the  attorneys  for  the  other 
side  could  not  aff^ord  to  let  any  more  of  it  be  entered  into  the  trial 
record.  We  were  proud  of  our  spokesmen  that  day.  Few  of  them  had 
ever  dreamed  that  they  might  be  compelled  to  make  a  substantial 
confession  of  faith  in  a  public  courtroom  in  the  presence  of  the  metro- 
politan press  and  in  an  atmosphere  lurid  with  prejudice. 

Mr.  Justice  Steinbrink  delivered  his  decision  with  theatrical 
versatility.  For  an  hour  and  a  quarter  he  impressively  extem- 
porized his  carefully  prepared  findings.  He  covered  a  vast  amount 
of  territory  with  seeming  erudition  and  much  citation  of  cases.  The 
substance  of  his  decision,  however,  boiled  down  to  three  points.  He 
ruled  that  the  special  meeting  that  had  removed  the  vestrymen  was 
illegal— not  because  special  meetings  could  not  be  held,  and  not 
because  there  was  no  precedent  for  removal  proceedings  in  New  York 
State— but  simply  because,  under  the  Religious  Corporations  Act,  the 
date  for  such  a  special  meeting  had  to  be  set  by  the  vestry,  and  ours 
had  not  been.  For  this  reason  he  further  ruled  that  the  nine  vestrymen 
were  still  in  office  for  the  balance  of  their  normal  terms  and  could  not 
be  removed  until  their  terms  expired.  To  all  practical  purposes,  this 
first  portion  of  the  judge's  decision  was  no  longer  revelant  to  the  situa- 
tion, since  the  legal  terms  of  five  of  the  nine  vestrymen  had  terminated 
and  they  had  been  replaced  at  the  stated  meeting  of  the  parish. 

20 


On  the  fundamental  question  that  had  been  posed  the  court  by  our 
attorneys:  does  the  canon  permit  a  vestry  to  petition  for  the  removal 
of  a  rector  in  the  face  of  a  written  protest  from  over  70%  of  the 
congregation;  and  does  the  filing  of  such  a  petition  give  a  bishop 
jurisdiction  to  act  when  neither  of  the  major  parties  named  in  the 
canon— namely,  the  parish  and  the  rector— is  submitting  to  his  arbitral 
judgment;  the  court  replied  in  substance  that  if  the  bishop  and 
standing  committee  felt  that  they  had  jurisdiction  within  the  meaning 
of  the  canon,  it  was  not  for  the  coru-t  to  rule  otherwise,  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  separation  of  church  and  state.  In  other  words,  Mr.  Justice 
Steinbrink  refused  to  give  a  ruling  on  the  merits  of  the  case. 

Having  taken  this  principled  position,  however,  and  after  having 
cited  many  rulings  in  support  of  it,  Mr.  Justice  Steinbrink  then,  in 
complete  contradiction  of  his  whole  line  of  argument,  proceeded  to 
impose  a  sweeping  civil  court  injunction  enforcing  full  compliance 
with  the  bishop's  judgment  dissolving  the  pastoral  relation. 

All  of  us  were  stunned  by  the  harshness  of  the  long  opinion  and 
the  severity  of  the  injunction.  Although,  from  the  outset,  the  atmos- 
phere of  the  court  had  compelled  us  to  anticipate  a  negative  verdict, 
we  had  nevertheless  believed,  as  the  argument  proceeded,  that  the 
judge  would  say  something  like  this:  "This  is  an  ecclesiastical  matter. 
Since  the  civil  court  will  not  interfere  in  an  ecclesiastical  matter 
to  question  or  dispute  a  bishop's  ruling,  so  it  will  not  interfere  to  help 
him  enforce  his  ruling.  That  he  must  now  do  in  conformity  with  the 
provisions  of  his  own  canon  law."  This  would  have  seemed  to  us  to 
have  been  the  logical  position  for  the  judge  to  have  taken  in  the  light 
of  his  emphasis  upon  the  theory  of  the  separation  of  church  and  state. 
No  such  discriminating  distinction  was  observed.  The  court  seemed 
intent  upon  making  certain  that  the  Melishes  were  removed  from 
our  parish,  and  that  Holy  Trinity— as  a  voice  of  independent  moral 
witness  in  the  Brooklyn  scene— should  be  effectively  silenced. 

Seated  in  the  court  room  was  an  outstanding  playwright  of  America, 
Mr.  Arthur  Miller,  Jr.,  Pulitzer  Prize  winner  and  author  of  "All  My 
Sons"  and  "Death  of  a  Salesman."  Deeply  disturbed  by  what  he  had 
witnessed,  he  went  home  and  wrote  to  The  Churchman: 

"Unfortunately,  what  a  little  group  of  extremely  reactionary  men— 
now  demonstrated  to  be  unrepresentative  of  the  congregation— failed 
to  accomplish,  tlie  civil  courts  seem  willing  to  provide,  if  the  be- 
haviour of  New  York  State  Supreme  Court  Justice  Steinbrink  is  any 
indication.  I  attended  a  session  of  the  trial  and  thought  it  clear  beyond 
doubt  that  the  judge  believed  his  duty  to  be  nothing  less  than  a 

21 


totally  unfavorable  decision  for  Dr.  Melisli,  who,  by  the  end  of  the 
ti'ial,  was  as  good  as  characterized  as  the  Russian  devil  incarnate. 

"It  seems  to  me,  that  if  America's  churchmen,  ministers  and  laymen, 
allow  this  stifling  of  the  pastoral  conscience  to  go  unchallenged,  they 
have  lost  the  right  to  complain  about  it  where  it  occurs  abroad,  and, 
perhaps  more  important,  have  buried  alive  their  own  right  to  speak 
and  act  as  their  consciences  may  demand." 

However  we  might  feel  about  the  court  proceeding,  the  effect  of 
this  decision  was  to  declare  the  dissolution  of  the  pastoral  relation 
between  Dr.  Melish  and  Holy  Trinity  Church,  and  to  deprive  him 
of  all  use  of  the  physical  properties.  This  much  was  specific  and  clear. 
Technically,  neither  the  decision  nor  the  injunction  altered  the  relation 
of  Mr.  Melish  to  the  parish.  Col.  Dykman  had  taken  the  position,  in 
advising  the  old  vestry,  that  an  assistant  rector  was  under  the  rector; 
could  not  be  removed  so  long  as  the  rector  wished  to  retain  him; 
but  once  the  rector  was  removed,  could  be  dismissed  by  the  vestry  or 
by  the  new  rector  whom  they  would  proceed  to  elect  and  install.  It 
will  be  seen  at  once  that  the  loss  of  a  controlling  majority  in  the  vestry 
had  upset  this  calculation.  The  rector  was  declared  removed  and  was 
deprived  of  the  use  of  the  properties,  but  the  position  of  the  assistant 
minister  still  remained  what  it  was,  since  a  majority  of  the  new  vestry 
was  prepared  to  continue  his  contractual  relationship  to  the  parish. 
This  was  anything  but  what  the  old  vestrymen,  the  standing  commit- 
tee, the  chancellor  or  the  bishop  had  intended.  In  the  light  of  our 
wholly  unanticipated  and  successful  congregational  fight,  this  was  the 
paradoxical  outcome. 

The  pattern  of  the  struggle  that  would  be  essential  to  assert  our 
congregational  rights  was  now  clearly  determined  by  the  circum- 
stances. Pending  the  outcome  of  the  appeal,  the  new  vestry,  controlled 
by  our  slim  6-to-5  majority,  would  have  to  maintain  the  services  of  the 
church  without  the  assistance  of  our  ministers.  Two  questions  con- 
fronted us.  Could  we  secure  clergymen  to  take  our  services,  even  if 
this  interim  period  should  last  a  year  or  more?  And  how  would  our 
parishioners  react  to  the  prospect  of  so  long  drawn-out  a  period  in 
which  visiting  ministers  would  be  in  the  chancel  and  their  own  min- 
isters would  be  seated  each  Sunday  in  the  pews? 

The  Pulpit  Supply  Committee  of  the  new  vestry  wrote  exploratory 
letters  to  many  clergymen  both  within  and  without  the  diocese,  turn- 
ing to  representatives  of  various  schools  of  thought  within  the  Church. 
Nearly  every  man  approached  responded  affirmatively.  When  they 
came  to  Holy  Trinity,  they  entered  into  the  spirit  of  the  parish.  Though 

22 


given  complete  freedom  of  choice  as  to  theme  and  content  of  their 
preaching,  the  majority  felt  inwardly  moved  to  take  subjects  broadly 
related  to  the  principles  that  they  felt  were  here  at  stake.  Positions 
that  our  ministers  had  propounded  were  given  forceful  advocacy.  If 
the  purpose  of  the  removal  of  the  rector  of  Holy  Trinity  had  been 
primarily  intended  to  stifle  a  type  of  prophetic  utterance,  the  result 
was  just  the  opposite.  Instead  of  two  men  preaching  witli  freedom  and 
candor,  here  were  fifty.  You  will  appreciate  the  heartening  effect  of 
this  experience  upon  our  congregation,  to  find  so  many  able  men 
representing  all  the  so-called  "parties"  in  the  Church  willing  to  come 
to  Holy  Trinity,  to  speak  out  in  the  same  great  causes  to  which  our 
ministers  had  given  of  tliemselves,  and  to  be  publicly  identified  with 
the  principles  we  in  our  struggle  were  seeking  to  advance.  Contrari- 
wise, it  helped  to  clarify  the  understanding  of  these  distant  friends 
among  the  clergy  to  meet  with  our  people  after  service  at  the  coffee 
hour  in  the  gymnasium  and  in  the  rectory.  The  ugly  labels  and  libels 
of  the  press  and  radio  stood  revealed  for  the  hollow  things  they  always 
were.  These  many  ministers  saw  for  themselves  what  manner  of  Chris- 
tians and  what  manner  of  Episcopalians  we  at  Holy  Trinity  are  trying 
to  be. 

A  program  of  regular  parish  activities  was  laid  out,  so  that  our 
people  might  meet  with  one  another  regularly  and  new  friends  in  the 
community  could  come  to  know  us  better.  A  men's  club  was  formed 
and  undertook  to  sponsor  a  monthly  parish  get-together.  Larger  events, 
involving  the  community  around  us,  took  the  form  of  an  elaborate 
Harvest  Festival,  a  Smorgasbord  Supper  and  an  impressive  birthday 
party  to  honor  Mr.  Melish  when  well  over  two  hundred  friends  sat 
down  to  dinner  in  the  gymnasium.  In  the  summer  months  hohday 
trips  were  planned. 

When  we  undertook  to  maintain  our  parish  in  this  unusual  fashion, 
we  had  no  illusion  as  to  the  difficulties  we  would  encounter.  It  was 
just  as  well  that  this  was  so,  for  they  began  to  manifest  themselves 
almost  at  once.  They  had  to  do  primarily  with  the  emotional  aftermath 
of  all  the  publicity  in  the  press  and  on  the  radio,  and  with  the  quiet 
campaign  that  continued  to  be  directed  against  us  by  those  elements 
in  Brooklyn  that  wished  to  eliminate  or  silence  such  a  protestant  and 
democratic  church  as  ours.  Casual  visitors  of  the  kind  that  had  always 
dropped  in  for  occasional  services  at  a  centrally-located  church  like 
Holy  Trinity  almost  entirely  ceased  to  come.  New  people  who  attended 
the  services  came  because  they  had  heard  about  us  and  were  in 
general  sympathy  with  our  positions.  On  the  other  hand,  we  discovered 
that  these  new  sympathizers  were  usually  hesitant  about  identifying 

28 


themselves  permanently  with  our  parish  because  it  was  still  too  early 
for  us  to  be  able  honestly  to  declare  what  its  future  was  going  to  be. 
In  the  summer  months  we  experienced  a  gain  in  attendance  but  in 
the  winter  months  a  slight  drop. 

There  were  penalties  paid  by  our  people  for  their  loyalty  to  Holy 
Trinity.  One  school-teacher  was  quietly  but  firmly  ousted  from  rented 
rooms  because  her  Roman  Catholic  landlord,  a  reader  of  The  Tablet 
and  The  Brooklyn  Eagle,  objected  to  a  tenant  who  received  her  mail 
from  "that  Red  Cathedral."  One  man,  employed  in  a  department  of 
the  city  government,  appeared  in  a  men's  club  photograph  in  The 
Brooklyn  Eagle.  A  few  days  later  he  found  the  photograph  clipped 
and  inserted  into  his  personnel  file,  and  when  a  routine  promotion  was 
due  him,  he  was  just  quietly  passed  over.  A  young  couple  that  had 
long  planned  to  be  married  in  Holy  Trinity,  found  that  relatives 
objected  stienuously  to  a  wedding  in  a  stygmatized  church  and  that  an 
usher,  employed  in  a  defense  industry  under  close  loyalty  check,  was 
afraid  that  participation  in  the  bridal  party  might  affect  his  security 
rating.  What  we  were  going  through  was  a  modern  Salem  village  with 
the  devil  this  time  hovering  not  over  Massachusetts  but  the  United 
States  of  America  and  moving  into  the  church  itself.  When  this  dis- 
turbed period  of  national  paranoia  is  over,  and  all  of  us  can  look 
back  upon  it  with  some  degree  of  detachment,  it  is  probable  that  this 
narrative  will  assume  the  stature  that  it  deserves.  For  what  was  hap- 
pening here,  was  that  ordinary,  decent,  average  parishioners  were 
finding  themselves  confronted  with  the  same  intimidation  that  had 
flattened  out  their  ministers,  and  instead  of  crumpling  before  it,  were 
learning  to  understand  what  their  ministers  had  been  going  through, 
and  then  were  themselves  standing  up  to  be  counted  in  the  same  brave 
fashion  for  the  fundamental  American  and  Christian  things  in  which 
they  really  believed  in  their  inmost  hearts.  In  the  last  analysis,  the 
peculiar  unity  and  staunchness  that  has  developed  within  our  con- 
gregation is  the  product  of  shared  suffering! 

The  ability  of  our  congregation  to  organize  and  maintain  its 
life  for  more  than  nineteen  months  under  circumstances  that 
would  pulverize  most  congregations,  is  the  final  and  incontestable 
proof  that  the  old  vestrymen  were  utterly  wrong  in  maintaining 
that  Holy  Trinity  would  be  destroyed  unless  the  ministers  were 
removed.  Holy  Trinity  has  not  been  destroyed  and  will  not  be 
destroyed.  This  parish  today  is  a  mature  Christian  congregation 
that  knows  its  mind  and  is  ready  to  do  the  work  in  the  world  that 
the  Lord  has  for  it  to  do. 

24 


WITH  THE  decision  made  to  see  this  struggle  through  to  eventual 
vindication,  no  matter  what  length  of  time  might  be  required, 
and  with  the  knowledge  that  we  had  the  equipment  and  the  friends 
to  enable  us  to  maintain  our  parish  life  for  an  indefinite  period,  if  that 
were  necessary;  it  became  important  to  begin  to  tell  our  story  to 
a  wider  audience.  People  ought  to  know  the  truth.  And  there  was  the 
practical  problem  of  defraying  the  heavy  cost  of  litigation  in  the 
forthcoming  appeal  proceedings.  As  a  congregation  we  had  limited 
resources  and  a  costly  parish  to  maintain.  We  needed  help  from  the 
outside  world.  The  result  of  this  necessity  was  the  preparation  and 
the  publication  of  the  booklet:  "The  Melish  Case:  Challenge  To  The 
Church."  Those  who  read  the  manuscript  in  proof  were  so  moved  by 
its  impact  that  we  decided  to  embark  upon  a  venture  of  faith.  Using 
volunteer  clerical  help  for  the  addressing,  stufiing  and  bundling  re- 
quired, we  mailed  out  nearly  40,000  copies  at  our  expense  with  a 
simple  appeal  and  a  return  envelope  tucked  inside  the  back  cover. 
What  would  be  the  reaction  and  the  financial  response?  They  exceeded 
our  most  venturesome  dreams.  That  booklet  made  "The  Melish  Case" 
a  living  issue,  and  the  financial  return  defrayed  the  heavy  costs  of 
litigation  in  the  New  York  State  courts. 

What  this  move  did  in  relation  to  the  general  public,  another  inter- 
esting development  accomplished  with  equal  success  among  the  clergy. 
The  Reverend  Joseph  F.  Fletcher,  professor  of  social  ethics  at  the 
Episcopal  Theological  School  in  Cambridge,  Massachusetts,  where 
both  our  ministers  had  taken  part  of  their  training,  issued  an  invitation 
to  tlie  clergy  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  to  participate  in  the 
appeal  as  "Friends  of  the  Court."  He  proposed  that  a  brief  amicus 
curiae  should  be  filed  with  the  court,  stating  that  the  signers  believed 
that  the  intention  of  the  present  canon  of  our  Church  was  to  give  a 
vestry  power  to  apply  for  a  pastoral  dissolution  only  in  such  cases 
where  the  vestry  truly  represented  the  parish,  and  not  in  such  a 
situation  as  ours,  where  the  vestry  acted  in  defiance  of  the  known 
wishes  of  more  than  70%  of  the  parishioners.  A  total  of  1,156  clergy- 
men—that is,  one  out  of  every  six  Protestant  Episcopal  ministers 
tliroughout  the  country— joined  in  this  brief.  We  know  of  no  such 
parallel  action  in  the  history  of  our,  or  any  other,  Church.  More  than 
anything  else,  coming  on  top  of  the  publication  of  our  booklet,  this 
amicus  brief  impressed  the  newspapers  from  coast  to  coast.  The  press 
began  to  treat  "The  Melish  Case"  with  greater  deference  and  even 
with  some  show  of  respect.  Bishop  DeWolfe  retaliated  by  refusing 
to  give  his  episcopal  approval  to  two  men  who  had  signed  tlie  amicus 
brief,  whom  vestries  were  considering  calling  as  rectors  of  parishes 

25 


vacant  within  his  diocese.  Unfortunately,  the  vestries  involved  were 
unprepared  to  make  a  test  of  their  traditional  rights  in  this  matter. 
Whether  the  bishop  would  actually  have  attempted  to  veto  such  calls, 
or  could  have  made  such  an  arbitrary  veto  stick— since  such  rejection 
has  no  precedent  in  Anglican  tradition— cannot  therefore  be  deter- 
mined. But  just  as  the  over-statements  in  Col.  Dykman's  original  docu- 
ment had  the  opposite  effect  of  what  he  intended,  so  this  "black- 
listing" of  the  clergy  similarly  proved  a  boomerang.  It  convinced 
innumerable  ministers  who  had  shied  away  from  "The  Melish  Case" 
because  they  thought  it  had  nothing  to  do  with  their  interests,  that 
they  had  an  immediate  and  personal  stake  in  the  issue  of  clerical 
tenure  and  freedom,  as  that  issue  was  being  fought-out  at  Holy  Trinity. 
By  going  steadfastly  ahead  with  our  parish  business,  and  by  such 
out-reaching  projects  as  these,  we  carried  our  parish  safely  through 
the  first  year  of  struggle.  On  Easter  Monday,  1950,  the  second  parish 
meeting  since  the  promulgation  of  the  bishop's  judgment  (intended 
to  forestall  all  parish  meetings)  took  place.  In  the  course  of  the  year 
what  little  opposition  there  was  in  the  parish  dispersed.  At  the  meet- 
ing it  did  not  show  its  face.  Nominations  for  four  more  places  on  the 
vestry  were  made  without  contest,  and  in  the  secret  ballot  that  fol- 
lowed these  nominees  were  unanimously  elected  by  a  total  vote  as 
large  as  that  of  the  year  before.  For  the  first  time  in  the  history  of 
our  parish  a  Negro  was  elected  to  the  vestry  to  represent  one  of  the 
most  devout  and  loyal  sections  of  our  congregation.  As  the  result  of 
this  election,  nine  of  the  eleven  places  on  the  vestry  were  now  in  the 
hands  of  the  congregation,  a  quorum  was  secured,  and  the  legal  cor- 
poration of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity,  even  by  the  rigid  definition 
of  the  canon  as  argued  by  Col.  Dykman,  was  returned  to  its  people. 
The  two  remaining  old  vestrymen,  whose  terms  of  office  do  not  expire 
for  another  year,  have  not  attended  a  vestry  meeting  and  are  w^or- 
shipping  in  another  parish  in  the  neighborhood.  Of  the  other  seven 
former  vestrymen,  two  have  moved  out  of  the  city,  and  a  third  (who 
was  the  spokesman  before  the  standing  committee)  has  taken  his 
Letter  of  Transfer  to  a  Manhattan  parish  where  he  now  resides. 

The  corporation  of  Holy  Trinity  Church  is  now  in  the  hands 
of  the  congregation,  which  is  appealing  to  the  highest  courts  in 
the  hope  that  Dr.  Melish  can  be  reinstated  as  our  rector;  but,  win 
or  lose  in  the  courts,  the  initiative  as  to  the  kind  of  parish  that 
Holy  Trinity  is  to  be,  and  the  kind  of  ministry  it  is  to  enjoy,  now 
rests  with  a  vestry  pledged  to  represent  us — the  parishioners. 


36 


WE  HAVE  SAID  LITTLE  in  this  narrative  about  the  legal  steps  that 
were  being  taken  simultaneously  with  the  maintenance  of  the 
life  of  the  parish.  Perhaps  there  is  really  little  to  say.  The  first  appeal 
was  made  before  the  Appellate  Division  of  the  Supreme  Court.  In 
spite  of  extended  argument  presented  in  the  briefs,  the  Appellate 
Division  unanimously  upheld  the  lower  court  decision,  acting  so 
swiftly  that  it  was  diflBcult  to  believe  that  much  consideration  could 
have  been  given  to  the  record  which,  in  its  printed  form,  numbered 
545  pages,  together  with  exhibits  and  briefs  amounting  to  several 
hundred  pages  more. 

At  the  Court  of  Appeals  in  Albany— the  highest  court  in  New  York 
State— the  case  received  equally  summary  treatment.  Again,  in  spite 
of  incontrovertible  evidence  that  a  constitutional  issue  of  serious  pro- 
portions was  involved,  the  case  was  dismissed  on  a  procedural  ground. 
It  was  hard  not  to  conclude  that  the  courts  were  reluctant  to  handle 
the  case  on  the  merits.  In  The  Churchman  Dr.  Shipler  commented 
editorially: 

"The  Canon  Law  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  sets  a  specific 
and  comparatively  mild  penalty  for  a  congregation  that  refuses  to 
obey  an  episcopal  judgment  dissolving  a  pastoral  relationship,  namely, 
deprivation  of  representation  in  the  diocesan  convention.  The  reason 
for  the  mildness  of  this  penalty  lies  in  the  respect  which  the  Episcopal 
Church  traditionally  pays  to  the  rights  and  relative  importance  of  the 
congregation. 

"In  the  'Melish  Case,'  a  lower  court  judge,  oblivious  to  the  long 
struggle  for  democracy  in  church  a£Fairs  that  underlies  our  Canon  Law, 
substituted  for  this  mild  penalty  a  drastic  civil  court  injunction  enforc- 
ing the  congregation's  compliance  with  the  bishop's  judgment  upon 
pain  of  fine  or  imprisonment  for  contempt  of  court.  The  judge  brushed 
aside  the  provisions  of  our  Canon  Law  and  substituted  a  penalty  of 
his  own  choosing. 

"Was  not  this  a  clear  intrusion  of  the  civil  court  into  the  realm  of 
Canon  Law  in  violation  of  the  State  and  Federal  Constitutions,  both 
of  which  establish  absolute  separation  of  church  and  state? 

"If  this  precedent  is  permitted  to  stand  unchallenged,  what  of  the 
future?  Unless  the  church  preserves  the  integrity  and  independence 
of  its  Canon  Law,  and  its  right  as  a  chmch  to  think,  to  preach  and  to 
operate  free  of  any  encroachment  by  the  state,  may  not  the  day  come 
when  the  church  will  find  itself  deprived  of  its  cherished  liberty? 

"From  the  first  pronouncement  of  the  bishop's  judgment  in  the 
'Melish  Case,'  the  diocesan  authorities  in  Long  Island  have  found 
themselves  confronted  with  an  enraged  congregation  on  the  war  path, 
shocked  beyond  words  at  the  inhuman  treatment  meted  out  to  one  of 


the  most  distinguished  rectors  in  the  entire  Episcopal  Church,  and 
outraged  at  the  'lynch  law'  procedures  utilized  to  remove  two  min- 
isters whose  personal  integrity  was  admitted  but  whose  political 
opinions  were  distasteful.  Does  the  church  public  know  that  321  mem- 
bers of  the  congregation  of  Holy  Trinity  Church  had  the  coiurage  to 
offer  to  go  on  the  witness  stand  in  the  civil  court  proceedings  and 
there  defy  the  bishop's  judgment?  Or  that  when  the  first  twelve  of 
them  had  testified,  the  testimony  was  so  damaging,  that  the  counsel 
for  the  vestrymen  and  the  bishop,  to  prevent  the  introduction  of 
further  evidence  of  this  character,  agreed  to  a  stipulation  now  in 
the  court  record  to  the  effect  that  there  were  321  parishioners  prepared 
to  defy  the  bishop's  judgment.  In  the  light  of  this  fact,  and  the  subse- 
quent history  of  more  than  eighteen  months'  intensive  struggle  to 
reverse  the  bishop's  judgment  on  the  part  of  this  same  valiant  congre- 
gation, it  becomes  unmistakably  clear  that  the  bishop  of  Long  Island 
could  not,  and  cannot,  enforce  his  highly  unpopular  and  morally 
questionable  judgment  without  the  help  of  the  coercive  power  of  the 
civil  court. 

"THE  CHURCHMAN  had  a  representative  at  the  Court  of  Appeals 
in  Albany.  It  was  notable  in  the  course  of  the  proceedings  that  Mr. 
Theodore  Kiendl,  attorney  for  the  old  vestrymen  (seven  of  whom  are 
no  longer  in  office),  did  not  so  much  as  appear!  The  burden  of  the 
case  was  carried  by  the  bishop's  chancellor,  Col.  Jackson  A.  Dykman, 
who  fought  tooth  and  nail  to  prevent  the  state's  highest  court  from 
reviewing  the  'Melish  Case'  so  that  the  power  of  the  civil  injunction 
might  remain  at  the  discretion  of  the  bishop  to  invoke.  This  is  the 
frightening  aspect  of  the  matter,  that  a  bishop— who  ought  to  be 
defending  the  independence  of  the  church  against  the  inroads  of  the 
state— in  this  case  was  so  set  upon  increasing  his  personal  authority 
that  he  lost  all  perspective  and  actually  accepted  the  role  of  a  litigant 
who  was  appealing  to  the  state  to  employ  its  full  coercive  power  in 
an  ecclesiastical  dispute  against  a  congregation! 

"In  the  light  of  the  long  history  of  painful  struggle  to  democratize 
the  Canon  Law,  which  is  the  heroic  contribution  of  the  Arnerican 
church  in  the  New  World,  this  action  of  Col.  Dykman  is  a  throw-back 
and  a  repudiation  of  all  our  hard-won  congregational  rights  and 
ecclesiastical  liberties.  Whether  they  know  it  or  not,  the  rector  and 
the  congregation  of  Holy  Trinity  are  standing  in  a  great  fighting 
tradition— we  say— the  tradition  of  our  church  in  democratic  America." 

What  was  happening  in  this  court  room  cannot  be  detached  from 
the  larger  framework  of  a  struggle  going  on  within  the  entire  Protes- 
tant Episcopal  Church.  Bishop  Ludlow,  in  his  address  to  the  diocesan 
convention  of  Newark,  recently  declared:  "Attempts  have  been  made 
to  drag  into  our  American  Church  life  the  whole  mass  of  customs 

28 


and  traditions  from  the  English  Church.  The  latest  attempt  was  at 
the  last  General  Convention  in  San  Francisco  when  one  of  the  prime 
movers  in  the  Melish  Case  tried  to  persuade  the  House  of  Deputies 
to  adopt  an  indefinite  mass  of  English  laws  and  traditions  as  binding 
upon  this  Church.  What  was  the  motive  behind  this  effort?  This  move 
was  properly  rejected  by  the  House  of  Deputies,  and  we  can  be  grate- 
ful that  they  stood  up  for  our  American  rights."  The  introducer  of 
this  legislation  at  the  1949  General  Convention  of  the  Protestant  Epis- 
copal Church  in  San  Francisco  was  none  other  than  Col.  Jackson  A. 
Dykman,  chancellor  of  the  diocese  of  Long  Island.  A  pattern  of  cen- 
tralized episcopal  authority  which  the  General  Convention  of  our 
Church  had  rejected  at  San  Francisco,  was  being  surreptitiously 
advanced  in  the  court  rooms  of  New  York  State  in  the  hope  that 
under  the  camouflage  of  the  removal  of  a  political  dissenter  the  prece- 
dents could  be  legally  established  that  would  increase  episcopal 
authority  throughout  a  traditionally  democratic  Chm"ch. 

So  important  is  this  point  to  an  understanding  of  our  struggle  at 
Holy  Trinity  that  we  quote  from  the  authoritative  article  on  "The 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church"  prepared  for  the  eleventh  edition  of 
the  Encyclopaedia  Britannica  by  the  Reverend  Dr.  Daniel  Dulany 
Addison,  a  noted  historian  of  our  Church  and  authority  on  its  canon 
law: 

"With  many  likenesses,  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  is  different 
from  the  Church  of  England  in  its  organization  and  representative 
form  of  government.  It  has  the  three  orders  of  bishops,  priests  and 
deacons,  and  uses  an  almost  identical  liturgy;  but  it  is  a  democratic 
institution  in  which  the  laity  have  practically  as  much  power  as  the 
clergy,  and  they  are  represented  in  all  legislative  bodies.  The  constitu- 
tion of  the  Church  follows  in  many  particulars  the  constitution  of  the 
United  States.  As  the  separate  states  of  the  Union  are  made  up  of 
different  townships,  so  the  diocese  is  composed  of  separate  parishes; 
and  as  a  nation  is  a  union  of  the  states,  so  the  Church  is  a  union  of 
the  dioceses.  The  American  plan  of  representative  government  is 
consistently  adhered  to.  The  Church  in  America  is  thus  a  part  of  the 
Catholic  Church  of  Christ,  with  its  roots  deep  in  the  past  and  yet  a 
living  body  with  a  life  of  its  own,  standing  for  the  truth  of  the  Chris- 
tian religion  in  the  great  republic.  .  .  . 

"A  special  feature  of  the  government  of  the  Church  is  the  power 
given  to  the  laymen.  In  the  parishes  they  elect  their  own  clergyman; 
and  they  have  votes  in  the  diocesan  convention  and  in  the  General 
Convention,  and  are  thus  an  integral  part  of  the  legislative  machinery 
of  the  Church." 

29 


The  refusal  of  the  state  courts  to  grant  us  any  relief  confronted  us 
as  a  congregation  with  the  question  as  to  whether  we  should  attempt 
to  appeal  our  case  to  the  United  States'  Supreme  Court.  If  the  lower 
comt  decision  could  be  reversed,  or  even  if  the  injunction  could  be 
lifted  or  modified  as  it  constrained  the  freedom  of  the  congregation, 
it  would  make  possible  the  restoration  of  Dr.  Melish  to  his  rightful 
place  as  the  rector  of  our  parish.  This,  we  were  all  agreed,  was  the 
end  in  view.  What  would  be  the  situation,  however,  if  the  Supreme 
Court  upheld  the  lower  court  decision,  or  if  it  rejected  our  application 
for  a  review?  Insofar  as  we  can  analyze  the  legal  situation,  the  out- 
come of  an  appeal  to  the  U.  S.  Supreme  Court  would  have  a  bearing 
simply  on  the  question  of  restoring  Dr.  Melish  to  the  rectorship.  It 
would  not  otherwise  affect  the  determination  of  the  future  policies 
or  ministry  of  the  parish.  The  relation  of  the  assistant  minister  to  the 
parish  was  never  altered  by  either  the  bishop's  judgment  or  the 
lower  court  decision.  It  is  our  studied  conviction  that  the  success- 
ful conduct  of  our  struggle  to  date  in  winning  control  of  the  vestry 
and  in  maintaining  the  parish,  has  given  our  people  through  our  new 
vestry  tlie  initiative.  If  Dr.  Melish  cannot  be  restored,  there  will  be  a 
vacancy  in  the  rectorship  of  Holy  Trinity,  which  it  will  then  be  the 
duty  and  the  responsibility  of  the  new  vestry  to  proceed  to  fill.  As  to 
our  rights  in  this  matter,  we  stand  on  the  traditional  practice  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  expressed  in  the  words  of  Dr.  Daniel 
Dulaney  Addison:  "In  the  parishes  they  elect  their  own  clergyman." 

Bishop  Parsons,  one  of  the  outstanding  historians,  scholars  and 
statesmen  of  our  Church,  analyzes  the  practice  of  our  communion  in 
a  series  of  articles  appearing  in  The  Witness  in  June  and  July,  1950. 
In  his  analysis  Bishop  Parsons  makes  two  assertions  that  are  funda- 
mental to  the  position  that  we  intend  to  maintain. 

First,  he  writes :  "The  initiative  ( in  the  calling  of  a  rector )  lies  with 
the  vestry."  So  clear  is  this  point  that  it  is  incorporated  in  the  Religious 
Corporations  Law  of  the  State  of  New  York,  section  42:  "The  vestry 
may,  subject  to  the  canons  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  in  the 
United  States,  and  of  the  diocese  in  which  the  parish  or  church  is 
situated,  by  a  majority  vote,  elect  a  rector  to  fill  a  vacancy  occurring 
in  the  rectorship  of  a  parish,  and  may  fix  the  salary  or  compensation 
of  the  rector." 

Second,  he  continues :  "The  canon  does  not  intend  to  give  the  bishop 
an  unlimited  veto  power.  .  .  .  The  vestry  should  understand  that  the 
bishop  has  full  advisory  rights  in  the  matter  of  their  choice  and  indeed 
as  loyal  churchmen  they  should  welcome  his  counsel  but  that  the 
iniiiative  and  final  decision  rest  with  them.  The  bishop  may  veto  that 

30 


decision  only  when  he  is  satisfied  that  the  person  chosen  is  in  char- 
acter and  education  not  properly  qualified  to  be  in  the  ministry  at 
all  .  .  .  the  bishop  can  [not]  veto  an  election  because  he  does  not  like 
a  man's  theology  or  his  social  views,  or  his  personality,  or  if  he  is 
outside  the  diocese,  because  he  is  not  the  kind  of  a  man  that  he 
wants  in  it.  It  is  not,  and  this  is  vitally  important,  a  question  of  whether 
the  bishop  thinks  the  man  would  not  be  well  adapted  to  the  particular 
parish.  That  is  the  vestry's  decision.  .  .  .  The  bishop  must,  to  put  it 
blundy,  be  satisfied  that  the  man  ought  not  to  be  in  the  ministry  at  all." 

We  add  to  this  the  pertinent  comment,  mentioned  several  times  in 
the  course  of  this  narrative,  that  the  bishop  himself  under  oath  on  the 
witness  stand  attested  to  the  sincerity  and  the  integrity  of  both  our 
ministers.  As  to  their  character  and  their  education,  there  can  be  no 
question  of  their  being  "duly  qualified."  They  are  both  already  resident 
in  the  diocese.  The  parish  wants  them  as  its  spiritual  leadership. 

The  area  of  our  freedom  of  choice  will  be  determined  by  the  out- 
come of  the  appeal  to  the  United  States'  Supreme  Comt.  After  many 
consultations,  the  decision  has  been  made  to  apply  for  a  writ  of 
certiorari  granting  us  a  review  of  our  case.  In  announcing  this  decision 
to  the  public,  a  statement  was  released  jointly  by  Lewis  Reynolds, 
senior  warden,  in  our  behalf;  and  by  the  rector.  Dr.  Melish.  We  know 
no  better  way  to  state  our  present  position  and  intentions  than  to 
conclude  with  their  striking  words. 


STATEMENT 

ON  Thursday,  Oct.  5,  1950,  the  Court  of  Appeals  of  the  State  of 
New  York  declined  to  review  the  case  of  Holy  Trinity  v.  Melish, 
stating  that  "no  constitutional  issue  was  properly  raised  in  the  courts 
below."  This  refusal  of  the  Court  of  Appeals,  based  on  a  procedural 
ground,  nevertheless  leaves  the  implication  that  a  constitutional  issue 
is  involved. 

Precedent  exists  that  the  United  States'  Supreme  Court  may  be 
asked,  and  will  often  consent,  to  review  a  case  where  a  constitutional 
issue  is  involved,  even  when  the  highest  State  Court  has  declined  to 
give  a  ruling. 

On  this  basis,  the  decision  has  been  made  jointly  by  the  rector, 
Dr.  Melish,  and  the  congregation  of  the  Church  of  the  Holy  Trinity, 
to  apply  to  the  United  States'  Supreme  Court  for  a  writ  of  certiorari 
that  will  permit  a  review  of  the  case  by  the  highest  tribunal  in  the 
land. 

81 


We  believe  that  a  fundamental  constitutional  issue  is  involved  in 
this  case.  The  Canon  Law  of  the  Diocese  of  Long  Island  specifically 
states  that  when  a  parish  refuses  to  obey  a  bishop's  judgment  dissolving 
a  pastoral  relation,  the  penalty  for  such  disobedience  shall  be  depriva- 
tion of  representation  in  the  diocesan  convention. 

In  the  face  of  this  exclusive  ecclesiastical  penalty,  the  lower  court 
imposed  a  different  and  more  drastic  penalty  upon  the  congregation. 
This  took  the  form  of  a  sweeping  civil  court  injunction  involving  the 
possibility  of  fine  and  imprisonment  on  pain  of  contempt. 

In  so  doing,  the  Court  set  aside  the  established  Canon  Law  of  the 
Church  and  substituted  a  penalty  of  its  own  choosing.  It  thereby 
clearly  breached  the  principle  of  the  separation  of  Church  and  State 
set  forth  in  both  the  State  and  Federal  Constitutions. 

This  constitutional  issue  takes  on  added  weight  because,  within  a 
few  weeks  of  the  rendering  of  this  decision  in  the  case  of  Holy  Trinity 
V.  Melish,  the  same  lower  coiu-t  judge  in  another  important  case,  that 
of  the  Cadman  Church  v.  the  Congregational-Christian  Churches, 
similarly  imposed  a  civil  court  injunction  in  a  specifically  ecclesiastical 
dispute. 

The  result  of  this  has  been  to  restrain  forever  the  churches  of 
congregational  polity  from  entering  into  any  church  union.  In  both 
these  instances,  the  civil  court  ignored  the  authority  of  existing 
ecclesiastical  organs  of  the  denominational  bodies  involved. 

Instead,  it  substituted  decisions  of  the  civil  court  that  affect  prac- 
tices of  the  national  church  bodies  of  two  great  Christian  communions. 

The  rector  and  the  congregation  of  Holy  Trinity  Church  have 
moved  slowly  to  this  joint  decision,  and  have  reached  it  only  after 
many  conversations  involving  not  merely  their  own  parishioners  but 
respected  leaders  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  and  other  churches. 
The  consensus  of  opinion  is  clearly  in  favor  of  pressing  this  funda- 
mental issue  to  the  highest  court  in  the  land. 

Because  of  widespread  misunderstanding,  we  wish  to  make  it  quite 
clear  that  the  case  of  Holy  Trinity  v.  Melish  was  originally  taken  into 
the  civil  courts  by  a  majority  of  the  vestry  of  this  parish,  whose  action 
in  seeking  the  pastoral  dissolution  was  repudiated  by  the  vast  majority 
of  the  legal  voters  of  the  parish. 

Seven  of  these  vestrymen  have  been  replaced  at  the  two  annual 
parish  meetings  that  have  since  occurred.  These  old  vestrymen  took 
this  action  on  the  advice  of  the  chancellor  of  the  Diocese  of  Long 
Island,  Col.  Jackson  A.  Dykman,  upon  whose  shoulders  rests  the  moral 
responsibility  of  advising  resort  to  the  civil  courts  in  an  ecclesiastical 
matter  that  should  have  been  resolved  within  the  family  of  the  church. 

32 


Since  this  case  has  been  taken  into  the  courts,  we  have  now  no 
other  recourse  than  to  seek  such  rehef  as  the  law  provides  through 
appeal  proceedings. 

Members  not  only  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  but  of  other 
denominational  bodies  as  well,  including  members  of  the  Congrega- 
tional-Christian Church,  have  made  it  unmistakably  plain  that  this 
issue  of  the  separation  of  Church  and  State  is  a  matter  of  basic  concern 
to  all  religious  groups. 

It  has  been  indicated  to  us  that,  individually  and  as  a  congregation, 
we  have  the  responsibility  of  clarifying  this  issue  and  presenting  it 
concretely  to  the  highest  tribunal  available. 

Our  decision,  therefore,  is  something  more  than  that  of  one  injured 
pastor  or  of  a  congregation  deprived  of  its  fundamental  rights.  It  is, 
we  believe,  the  expression  of  the  religious  community's  concern  that 
a  principle  essential  to  the  very  fabric  of  the  democratic  structure  of 
the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  and  the  United  States  of  America 
itself,  is  here  at  stake. 

The  people  of  Holy  Trinity  Church,  under  conditions  made  ex- 
tremely difficult  by  widespread  misrepresentation  of  the  facts  in  this 
controversy  and  by  the  existence  of  a  state  of  general  public  hysteria 
bearing  on  all  civil  liberties,  have  reached  a  clear  and  determined 
decision. 

We  believe  that  the  right  to  preach  the  Christian  Faith  itself — 
its  vitality,  its  freedom,  its  opportunity — all  are  involved  in  this 
case.  This  unexpected  and  unwanted  burden  of  responsibility  has 
been  thrust  upon  us  by  the  urgencies  of  this  historic  period  of 
tension. 

Under  God,  humbly  and  prayerfully,  we  take  this  action  in  the 
faith  that  it  will  help  contribute  to  the  integrity  and  the  vitality 
of  true  Christian  witness  within  the  United  States  and  before  the 
eyes  of  the  entire  world. 


33 


Copies  of  The  Melish  Case:  Challenge  To  The  Church  and 
additional  copies  of  The  Story  of  a  Congregation  may  be 
obtained  by  writing: 

Melish  Case  Defense  Committee 

Mrs.  Ella  P.  Rose,  Treasurer 
161  Henry  Street,  Brooklyn  2,  N.  Y. 


^ 


PHOTOMOUNT 
FAMPIiLET  BINDER 


•Vi  nufoctured  by 

GAVLORD  EROS.  Inc. 

Syrncuse,  N.Y. 

Stockton,  Calif. 

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